MediaManager Release 2.2

Media Manager v2.2 has been released. This is a major update that focuses on iTunes integration. Here is a list of the major changes:

• Able to use the latest XBMC addons as media information sources.
• Many improvements to the XBMC addon source.
• Handle TV episodes that contain more than one episode
• Added new File Database store
• Added ability to store seen file information within a database resources
• Added command line tool to print database schemas
• Added configuration option for strip tokens.
• If sources, stores or actions are configured, sensible defaults are used
• Added new database store
• Show/Film search make use of ignore tokens to find media name
• Added ability to configure database resources
• Added images for seasons of shows. These are used by default for mp4 files.

This has been quite a while coming, but it's finally here. The project website has now move to here. Please use the project website to let me know of bugs or feature requests. Also if you find the application useful then let me know on my blog. 

The main focus of this release has been updating the XBMC scraper support to work with the latest scrapers and stores that make use of databases.

The Road to MediaManager 2.2

The The next release (2.2) of Media Manager is has been quite close for quite a while now. Or at least I though it was. Each time I've been getting close to a relase I've had to put it off due to lack of time.

Well the good news is that it's had quite a lot of development over the last couple of months. It's also now hosted on bitbucket. The main reason for this is the removal of Google code features such as downloads! I consider hosting on github, but currently prefer bitbucket/mercurial. The move over will be completed when I make the next release, however all the code is now pushed to bithucket. Visit the project page here.

The main focus the last couple of months has been supporting the lastest XBMC media scrapers. Their have been a lot of changes in the scraper format since I first added support for them. Some of the changes has caused things to break and media info to be missing. The XBMC scrapers are quite a bit more advance than the initial versions I started using. Media Manager now handles these new scrapers, allowing full information to be fetched for TV Shows and films. We are also now default to the frodo branch of the XBMC scrapers.

In order to support the new features of the XBMC scrapers I created a lot of new unit tests. The scrapers are some of the most heavily tested parts of Media Manager. These test will help a lot with future changes to XBMC scrapers.

The main driver for this was getting TVDB show images to work correctly. Their were quite a few problems with the scraper custom functions that had to be addressed. Most of the web documentation on the scrapers seems to be quite out of date now. This took a lot of trail and effort, but it seems to be working very well now.

Their are still a number of features left to implement for 2.2, the biggest is a pure Java replacement for atomicparsely. This is almost their, just needs testing....

Media Manager v2.1 released

Media Manager v2.1 has been released. This is a major update that focuses on iTunes integration. Here is a list of the major changes:

• Seen files can be ignored
• Directories can be watched for new media, which is then moved to the correct media directory.
• MP4 Files metadata now handled by fork of atomic parsley.
• Much improved MP4/M4V metadata.
• Support for High Def media.
• New Store for notifying iTunes of media file changes via a remote server running on the iTunes box.
• Improved windows support.
• Improved TV Show/Film searching.
• Fixed issues with launch scripts.
• Debian/Ubuntu install packages.

This has been quite a while coming, but it's finally here. Please use the project website to let me know of bugs or feature requests. Also if you find the application useful then let me know on my blog. 

I'm hoping that project releases will come quicker now with a smaller feature set. Currently work in in progress on the next release which will include a database store and a update to the XBMC scraper support.

The native tools that Media Manager uses have changed since the last release. It now uses media info and my Atomic Parsley fork. The new iTunes store also makes use of my remote itunes controller project.

To download the latest release please visit the project website. Their is a generic installer for most platforms and OpenSuSE/Debian/Ubuntu packages. Also you can find the latest OpenSuSE builds via my OpenSuSE source.

Media Manager v2.0 Released!

Media Manager v2.0 has just been released. The project has had a name changed since the last updated (previously known as MediaInfoFetcher). This is a major update that focus on managing media (Currently TV Shows and Films) and much greater reliability when fetching meta data.

Some of the change high lights are as follows:

• Better searching for film and TV information using XBMC scrapers
• Tool to download and stay uptodate with the latest XBMC scrapers
• Much improved film title and show name lookup by variours searching strategies
• New actions, such as ability to execute system commands on media files and rename the media files
• Enhanced renaming patterns which new token types and optional parts to patterns.
• Can lookup film information from .NFO files.
• Improved configuration options
• New XML store for caching media information
• Improved tag chimp source, that will use the sites API instead of scraping the HTML.
• Maybe new configuration options (and a new configuration format).
• New installer for all platforms.

This has been quite a while coming, but it's finally here. Please use the project website to let me know of bugs or feature requests. Also if you find the application useful then let me know on my blog.

So click here for more information.

MP4 Libraries in Media Manager

MediaManager 2.0 is pretty much ready to release apart from a problem with the MP4ItunesStore. This store is used to save metadata into mp4/m4v files so that they appear correctly in iTunes and can be used with AppleTV, iPad's etc....

In version 1.x this store was based around a command line application AtomicParsely. However this always anoyed me as it was not very easy to use and was slot to drive it from java.

In version 2.x I've been working towards a pure java solution. I first of starting to use jaudiotagger. I found this while working on my podcaster application. This is more about audio files than video though. It works well for podcaster, but not very well for MediaManager. I had to hack it quite a bit before it would work, then I started to find problems with parsing some MP4 files.

I stumbled across mp4parser next. This is pretty good and does everything I need or so it seemed at first. I found a number of bugs in the library. I fixed a number of these and sent patches to the project (Still not been applied :-( ), I then found a case where a DVD I had turned into a MP4 file would get corrupted.  raised a issue on this also. Not only did it courrpt the file, but it gave me no way of detecting a error. Due to these problems I had to stop using the library. The project has a hight amount of activity so I'm still hoping these things might get fixed.

I've looked around for other Java solutions, but not found any. I could possibly write my own or fork one of the others, but that's too much work for now. Instead I've started to look at using a native library called MP4v2 which is used by a number of other C/C++ projects. To create the bindings I'm using JNA. This as not been without problems though. Currently on Linux I'm seeing segfaults unless I use a 32Bit sun JVM. Strangely this happens on a 64Bit sun JVM also. I'm currently hopeing to find out why and fix the problem, but will see what happens.......... It might mean we only have iTunes support for curetain Arch/JVM's.

Anyways once these problems are solved, MediaManager will be ready for release

MediaInfoFetcher is no more, long live MediaManager

No need to panic, MediaInfoFetcher has been renamed to MediaManager to reflect that the next version will be much more that a tool to fetch media information. It is not a tool for managing Media collections.

Since my last post, Media Manager as really started to take shape. Many bugs have been found and fixed with is bringing it nearer to a release. Also it now has nearly all the features that will be present in the next release. These include the following:

• Better searching for film and tv information using XBMC scrapers
• Tool to download and stay uptodate with the latest XBMC scrapers
• Much improved film title and show name lookup by variours searching strategies
• New actions, such as ability to execute system commands on media files and rename the media files
• The renaming as also improved quite a bit as the patterns have new elements like optional parts.
• Can lookup film information from .NFO files.
• Improved configuration options
• New XML store for caching media information
• Improved tag chimp source, that will use the sites API instead of scraping the HTML.
• New installer for all platforms.

As you can see that is quite a impressive list of features going into the next release and their are still a couple in the works. The previous version had the concept of sources and stores, but now has the concept of actions. Actions are performed on the media files when they are found. So a new action as been created for renaming media witch used to be the only thing the old version could do.

Users are able to write the own custom actions, stores and stores in Java and use them. This gives a great way for custom things, but also allows for testing of new actions, stores and sources before they make it to a release.

Anyhow the next release is getting closer......

MediaInfoFetcher version 2.0 progress so far....

It's been a little while since I posted any kind of update on the my open source project MediaInfoFetcher. For those not familiar with the project. MediaInfoFetcher is a application and a API which can be used to retrieve TV show and movie meta data from Internet sources. This information is then stored locally and can be used to rename media files with the correct title.

Version 1.0 was released sometime ago now, with several updates since then. However it was always had problems keeping up with the web sites that it scraped for information. So I've been working on version 2.0 for a little while now and it's making good progress. A lot of things will change in the next version which will help to keep it up today and always working in between releases.

Some of the features to look forward to:

• Added a source that uses XBMC media player scrapers.
• Checks for and downloads updates of XBMC scrappers.
• Removed the old XMLStore and replaced it with a new one that stores all media files in a single XML file.
• Removed some of the source which were always broken. Now using the XBMC source instead.
• Much better searching of media data (films and tv).
• No longer uses Atomic Parsely to write .mp4 metadata. Uses a pure Java solotuion instead.
• And much more to come....

Things are shaping up nicely, but it still has a way to go before it's release ready. I'm very pleased with it's ability to use XBMC scrapers. This means it can always obtain media information without having to worry about it going out of date. It also means their are many more sites that media data can be obtained from as their are quite a lot of different XBMC scrapers.

Released PodCaster version 1.0

Just made a release (1.0) of PodCaster. This is the fist time I've removed the beta status from the project. The release is mostly a bug fix release as it's been though quite a bit of testing and bug fixing.

Due to this been a bug fix release, the features are pretty much unchanged:

• Capture Internet radio to audio files.
• Create MP3, WAV and MP4 files.
• Encodes metadata and cover art into the media files.
• Create pod cast from captured radio stations.
• Supports real audio and Microsoft ASF format.

Please goto here to find out more details and download the release.

MediaInfoFetcher Release 1.2.2

Just made release 1.2.2 of MediaInfoFetcher. This is a small bug fix release mostly. The release can be downloaded from here.

Changes are as follows:

Bug Fixes:

• Updated some of the soruces with changes from in the source html they parse.

First release of podcaster (0.1 beta)

Just made the first release (0.1 beta) of PodCaster. This is a beta release as its the first initial release. Hopefully this will allow me to find any bugs in it and make a solid second release.

Thinking about the next release, I'd like to add some configuration options to allow the tools that PodCaster relies on to be configured.

Here is some of the features that can be found in this release:

• Capture Internet radio to audio files.
• Create MP3, WAV and MP4 files.
• Encodes metadata and cover art into the media files.
• Create pod cast from captured radio stations.
• Supports real audio and Microsoft ASF format.

Please goto here to find out more details and download the release.

Released MediaInfoFetcher 1.2.1

Just made release 1.2.1 of MediaInfoFetcher. This is a small bug fix release mostly. The release can be downloaded from here.

The project got it's first issue raised which as been fixed in this release. If you find any defects in the release or want to request new features, you can raise them here.

Changes are as follows:

Features:

• Now able to rename subtitle files

Bug Fixes:

• Fixed some null pointer issues
• Updated to work with changes in source websites

MediaInfoFetcher Release 1.2

I've just released version 1.2 of MediaInfoFetcher. This is a application that can be used to find Film and TV Show meta data, and store it in various formats. It also can be used to rename media files using this data. The latest version can be found here.

Changes are as follows:

• FEATURE: Recursive renaming of media files
• FEATURE: Added a MythTV Store for writing film information to the MythTV database.
• FEATURE: Added logging to the application (Using log4j).
  
• FEATURE: Added new Film Hybrid source that takes the best of all the film sources.
• FEATURE: Films can now have a genre flagged as primary
• FEATURE: Added new www.tagchimp.com source for films.
• FEATURE: Films can now also have chapter name information and long descriptions.
• FEATURE: Films and TV Shows can now have non numeric ID's.
• BUGFIX: Updated all the web parsers for latest changes to the websites.
• BUGFIX: Fixed text output. Now shows text for "Fetching film from source" instead of "Fetching show from source".
• PERFORMANCE: Speed ups for MP4 store using atomic parsley. It now longer writes metadata unless it needs too and artwork is removed at the same time as writing the metadata.

Let me know if you find any bugs with the relase! Enjoy!

XBMC on ARM

I saw this today, which is very interesting. It's basically a short demo of XMBC running on the ARM platform. This is is the start of a really great media centre. I've so far been using Mac Mini's as media centres for their size, however the setup is a little complex and I've no need for local storage really. All the media I watch is on my server.

So the video shows XMBC running on a ARM Cortex-A8 beagle board. The actual hardware is tiny. The operationg system looks to be be booting of a SD Flash Card. I guess it would need some kind of IR control for me to use it and maybe a DVD driver, but these should be doable, both could be attached by USB. I think once OpenGL ES support is working I might see about getting once of these boards. They should be noiseless to.

Most my TV's are old, so I wonder if I can connect it to scart (I'll probally replace the TV at somepoint, but would nice not to be force into it).

Media Centre's - Plex

I've been looking into different media centres for use in my home. I made a previous post about XBMC. This showed a lot of promise, but had a few issues (since that post I've tried the SVN version and a lot of the problems have been resolved). Since the main use I have a media center is on a mac mini below the DVD, I though I'd give Plex ago.

Plex is a media center that was forked for XMBC and only works on Intel MacOSX. The aims of the project are to produce more integrated version of XMBC for OSX.

As I stated in my previous post, I've been running MediaCentral from Equinux. However this had a few problems:

• Unable to eject the DVD!
• Not able to play .mkv's (they don't show up in the media lists)
• No plugin support
• No meta data display

Also whilst looking at XMBC I found that playback of media was choppy (This might not be the case with the SVN version, I've yet to try this).

Anyway I'll start of by saying, I've been very impressed with Plex. First of it plays all my media files with no problems, both low def and high def content.

Once of the features that I really like is the the remote control support. Both Plex and XMBC (I'd not tried this till now) allow you to use a harmony remote. So I no longer need to use the apple remote with it's limited buttons. This has been really great. It makes the media center much more usable as I refuse to attack a keyboard and mouse to something below the TV.

It's also possible to add special buttons for things like "Eject". So finally I'm able to eject DVD's from the mac mini with the use of a remote control. This is quite a big deal as I've always had to do it via SSH session from a laptop before.

The plugin support has been hugely improved from what I'd seen with XBMC. I've been using the iPlayer plugin and this is very responsive and no longer needs to spend ages reading content from the BBC.

The interface for downloading new plugins is very slick, I was quite impressed. You just go to the application section and select the pluing you wish to install. This was a big advantage over XMBC. Another nice feature is the automatic update. I was prompted to ask if I wanted to install the latest version. I select yes (with the remote control) and it installed the latest version!

Plex inherits all the good features of XMBC, so it has some really good themes (once i got used to default on called "MediaStream" I've really got to like it.) It's meta data support is also great.

The only negative I've found so far is that it does not allow the playing of DVD's. From what I've been able to find out, they claim that this is buggy and have disabled it. This is a real pain, at the moment I've using the PS3 to play DVD's. I'm hoping that this gets turned back on at some point. It's worth noting that XBMC has no problems with DVD's.

So in conclusion a very good media center for the OSX machines that does everything I'd want with the exception of DVD playback.

Media Centre's - XBMC

I've been looking around for a media centre to use. I have a mac mini below the TV that is used to play content stored on my server. I'm currently running MediaCentral from Equinux. However this has a few problems:

• Unable to eject the DVD!
• Not able to play .mkv's (they don't show up in the media lists)
• No plugin support
• No meta data display

So because of these problems I've been looking around for other media centre's. The first I've looked at is XBMC. I'm looking for a nice looking media centre that hopefully works on windows, Linux and OSX. Though OSX is the only one currently that I must have it working on. I'm also looking for it to fix the above problems, as well as been fast. One other feature I'd really like to see, is the ability to get the metadata from the MediaInfoFetcher application I wrote.

So first off XBMC seems to work on linux, windows and OSX. However after playing around with it a bit this is not quite the case. I could not get it to start on my OpenSuSE Linux box at all, it just complains about a problem with Open GL. I suspect that this is a problem with the ATI Linux graphics drivers and 64 bit, though no other app has a problem. I tried it on a different Linux box, and it started fine their.

The windows setup was a little odd, first it seemed to be working fine, then I tried to setup the media, which is on remote samba shares as far as windows is concerned. This did not work as a XBMC witch is odd given that you would expect windows shares to work very well on windows. So I tried mapping them to drive letters, and got one of the sources add to XBMC. However I was not able to add the others. Every time I tried, I though the drive letter as relative to the users home directory. So not very usable on windows!

Next I tried it on OSX on my mac mini, this is the device that really matter as it's below the TV. I'll be expecting HD 1080p output for this and surround sound via the digital out of the mac mini. I also need the remote control to work as this device does not have a keyboard or mouse. All this stuff pretty much worked. The remote control functions took a bit of getting used to, but was actually quite good. All the previous mention problems were fixed, I could even eject DVD's and play lots of different media types.

Next up I wanted to try some plugins. One of the ones I was most eager to try was the iPlayer plugin. This worked very well. on mac os, but not on windows. It was actually very impressive watching iPlayer content on the large TV screen, makes you wonder if you still need a TV tuner.

I then tried to watch some media files, and this is were the mac OSX problems started. It would start of playing quite nicely, then become choppy. This is low def content, so it's quite unexpected. This content plays fine in Frontrow and MediaCentral. Also fast forwarding on the remote seemed a bit clunky and made things go choppy to.

The meta data display was great for films, however did not work very well for TV shows. Mainly because I wanted to be able to store them in a directory and take the show name from the directory. This was only supported for films, but I only wanted to do it for TV shows. It has the ability to add scrapers for different sites via XML files, which is quite nice, but I could not find anyway of parsing data fetch my own application.

In summary, it's a really nice media center with a lot of potential. At the moment, it does not quite meet all my needs due to the different problems on different platforms. I think the the choppy playback could be solved I'd probably use it.

Just released version 1.1 of MediaInfoFetcher

I've just released version 1.1 of MediaInfoFetcher. This is a application that can be used to find Film and TV Show meta data, and store it in various formats. It also can be used to rename media files using this data. The latest version can be found here.

Changes are as follows:

• Able to rename Films with data fetched from the web.
• Added new Film source for fetching film information from www.imdb.com.
• Updated stores to store film information.
• Added new MP4 store for storing metadata in mp4 files used in iTunes.
• Added support for renaming .mp4 and .m4v files.
• Film posters are fetched from the Internet and stored in .mp4 and .m4v files.
• Updated to the latest format changes of www.tv.com site.

Happy Christmas! let me know if their are any bugs in this release.

Media Info Fetcher

I was face with a problem a while back, I had quite a few media files that and the wrong names. I wished to rename these too the correct names. I wished to be able to define what I though was a correct name. The main reason for this is that they show up in my media centre. A second thing I wanted, was meta data associated with each of the media files that could be displayed in the media centre.

It was for these reasons that I hacked together some Perl scripts that used the great Perl module. This allowed me to retrieve the meta data that I was after. However I prefer to work with Java over Perl and as my application was needing more and more features, I decided to rewrite it in Java.

So Media Info Fetcher was born. This is a java application that can retrieve Film and TV Show information, and rename it according too data it looks up off the Internet. This information is then cached using configurable stores so that hopefully it can be used by media centres.

I think I've achieved my first aim so far, but my second aim of getting a media centre too use the retrieved data has yet too happen. This is probably going to involve creating a plug-in for other media centres. Though I'm open too ideas about this.

Anyway I've just made the first release of the 1.0 version of Media Info Fetcher. So check it out here.

I've some plans for the next major version. These may change, but include:

• Adding support for Films.
• Adding more stores and sources.